The Monday front-page Times news report “Demand up for detox space in St. Cloud” highlights one of the troubling realities of being a growing metro area: A growing general population also can mean a growth in demand for detox services.

This challenge, though, isn’t new. The question is whether the metro area will learn from similar past challenges and work together to craft the best solutions in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Lori Schmidt, executive director of the Central Minnesota Mental Health Center, which operates the center at 1321-13th St. N, said the basic challenge is to create about five more beds. Occupancy rates for the 14-bed facility now range from 85 percent to full, especially on weekends. Within two years, Schmidt expects the center to be full seven days a week.

When the center is full, people needing detox often use up more resources involving law enforcement, emergency medical care and the like. Those ripple effects are huge. Police can’t respond to other calls, trauma centers must add security and even beds, and ultimately taxes and even insurance rates go up to cover those costs.

Minimizing those effects — read: opening up five beds — in the short term is achievable if the center can partner with another provider such as the St. Cloud VA Health Care System or move mental health services now at detox to another location.

In the long term, Schmidt said a number of options can be pursued, all of which involve different parts of the community.

For example, the opening of Rivercrest, a facility for chronic inebriates in St. Cloud, was a huge part of the solution the last time the detox center — along with law enforcement and health providers — saw overwhelming demand for detox services.

Once Rivercrest opened, many chronic inebriates who routinely got sent to detox no longer went there because they had housing. Rivercrest is now full. Expanding it could be part of a solution. Similarly, the center itself could be expanded, or a second location opened.

Funds and community leadership to do either are needed.

Another approach involves how the state defines detox services. Schmidt said state officials, including the Legislature, are studying whether to allow “social detox” treatments. Basically, that means a person can become sober in less than 24 hours and doesn’t require a bed. Legislation permitting that approach could allow the center to take in more patients, especially on weekends.

And, of course, who pays the cost of detox also poses challenges. If patients have private insurance that covers detox, the center collects that amount. If no insurance, the counties where a person is declared to need detox have to pay the costs, which are more than $300 a day.

The state, though, may remove counties from paying the bills and have private insurance or state-funded care programs (think Medicaid) cover the costs. Schmidt’s concern with that is reimbursement rates might not cover actual costs.

About the only sure thing amid all those variables is the metro area will continue to see demand increase for detox services. Given that, it’s time the community examine those variables and fashion its best answer to meet that growing demand.

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